Gingrich warns Freedom Caucus to study his era as conservatives issue demand letter after Johnson vote
Former president Newt Gingrich, who led Republicans to their first House majority in four decades in 1994, said Saturday that the House Freedom Caucus should remember how his caucus brought conservatives to power within the party.
Gingrich tweeted that he and other conservatives developed “principles of affirmative action” in 1983 as part of what they called the Conservative Opportunity Society.
“[Those] they led 11 years later to the treaty with America and the first majority in the House of Representatives of the Republican Party in 40 years.”
“If the Freedom Caucus studied them, they could be dramatically more effective,” Gingrich said, quoting and agreeing with political reporter Mark Halperin’s “Wide World of News” opinion piece.
“[T]The Freedom Caucus is a group of insurgents with a variety of causes, but no coherent path to achieve said causes,” Halperin wrote.
In the 1980s, even though Ronald Reagan was in the White House, Boston Democratic Speaker Tip O’Neill had strong control of the House of Representatives. O’Neill and Reagan had an extremely friendly but ideologically different relationship.
Coinciding with the early days of C-SPAN’s live coverage of the floor, Gingrich often took to the House well late at night and took questions from conservatives in a mostly empty room but with a captive audience on the new TV format. .
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Gingrich biographer Craig Shirley told Fox News Digital on Saturday that the Freedom Caucus should study the work of its comparative predecessor, the Conservative Opportunity Society, as well as Gingrich’s journey from low-profile congressman to speaker.
“I guess the word brilliant is thrown around so, so cavalierly. Let me just say, it was extremely smart politics to champion conservative rule,” Shirley said of Gingrich’s work in the 1980s and 1990s.
“Reagan had already blazed that trail eight years before Gingrich.”
While critics say the GOP has moved hard to the right on some issues and softened on others, Shirley said it’s essentially the same as it was during Gingrich’s rise.
“Less government, more freedom, less taxes, a strong national defense, for life.”
Former Representative Vin WeberR-Minn., another leading member of Gingrich’s conservative caucus, said in an interview with PBS that there weren’t too many groups like the Conservative Opportunity Society (or the Freedom Caucus, which hadn’t been formed at the time of the interview) and that there was the same problem with apprehension about the anger of their party leaders.
Weber said that before the Reagan era, there were several small conservative groups within the caucus, including one in the 1960s led by then-Rep. Donald Rumsfeld, R-Ill. – who will serve twice as head of the Pentagon.
On the last day of the 1982 session, Gingrich approached Weber and asked, “What are you doing next year and the next 10 years after that?”
“I thought that was interesting and I said, ‘I expect to be back here, but nothing special,'” Weber recalled.
“What he was saying was that he, as one person, was not effective… He identified me in [GOP] conference as someone [who] supported his point of view and maybe had some ability to organize things,” Weber said.
MIKE JOHNSON RE-ELECTED PRESIDENT OF REPRESENTATIVE STOP
Shirley said the current Freedom Caucus has a rare opportunity to achieve its goals if they play their cards right, with full Republican control of Washington.
“They don’t have a ‘contract,’ but they have the next best thing. They have a core set of issues and an ideology that they can easily follow,” he said, adding that “no one should doubt” President Mike Johnson’s commitment to “Reagan” principles.
In additional comments to Fox News’ “Hannity,” Gingrich said Friday’s runoff vote was a “big win” for Johnson, R-La.
“[He’s] just a decent, hardworking, intelligent human being… I couldn’t be the speaker he is. I have no patience. I don’t have that ability to just keep moving forward. It’s really quite remarkable.”
Meanwhile, Member of the Freedom Club Ralph Norman, RS.C., told Fox News that the group had previously met with Johnson and that he “just didn’t come away feeling like there was any ‘umph’ or a willingness to fight for Trump’s agenda.”
“And I use as a backdrop what happened in the last 14 months, we had comprehensive bills of 1,500 pages that you couldn’t read – where you didn’t have spending cuts to offset $100 billion in new spending.”
“And I know we had a slim majority, but that’s over now. What we wanted to impress [Johnson] yesterday was, are you going to fight for these things that we’ve been asking for, like a balanced budget? As compensations? Like you’re behind all of Trump’s plans?”
Norman, along with Rep. Keith Self, R-Texas, initially did not vote for Johnson, which would have led to a runoff for the speaker.
But Norman told “The Story” that this action is “the only way to make my voice heard.”
He said Johnson “gave his word” that he would fight for the things he mentioned to Fox News, and that agreement, plus Trump’s message that Johnson was the only candidate for speaker with support in the caucus, guided his decision to ultimately back the Louisianan .
In the letter “Dear colleague” published on Friday, the Club for Freedom in the House Speaker Andy Harris, R-Md., and its members expressed several policy points Johnson should address to “reverse the damage of the Biden-Harris administration” as well as achieve long-term conservative goals.
The letter indicated that they voted for Johnson because of their “strong support” for Trump and to ensure that the Jan. 6 election certification goes smoothly.
“We did so despite our sincere reservations about the president’s track record over the past 15 months.”
The caucus urged Johnson to modify the House calendar to keep its schedule as busy as the Senate’s, ensure that reconciliation legislation reduces spending and deficits in “real terms” and stop violations of the “72-hour rule” for debating bill amendments .
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They also demanded that Johnson not rely on Democrats to pass legislation that the majority in his caucus will not support.
In comments on “The Story,” Norman said he believes Johnson now understands — through the initial silence of several Republicans during the first roll call and his and Self’s initial vote against Johnson — that he will have to work to consider the views of the conservative bloc of demands.